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THE PILGRIM FATHERS: 



A GLANCE AT THEIR 



HISTORY, CHARACTER AND PRINCIPLES, 



-BY- 



HENRY M. GOODWIN, 

PASTOR OF FIBST CON O BE O A T 10 N A I, CBl'BCB, BOCKFOBD 





THE PILGRIM FATHERS. 



A GLANCE AT THEIR 



HISTORY, CHARACTER AND PRINCIPLES, 



— IN — 



TWO MEMORIAL DISCOURSES, 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, ROCKFORD, 
MAY Q3, 1870, 



Rev. H. M. GOODWIN. 



I»t7BLISHKr> BY REQUEST. 



ROCKFORD, ILL. : 
BIKD, CONICK & FLINT, STEAM BOOK A-ND JOB PRINTBR8, REGISTER OFFICB. 

1S70. 






[The Convention ■whitli on call of the Church of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, met in the Uroadway 
Tabernacle in New York, on the Second of March last, to " take such action as shall seem to it expe- 
dient for ordering the Commemorative Services of this 250th year since the landing of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth," passed among others the following resolution, viz : 

"ii«oZt)«rf, That it be earnjstly recommended that during the month of May next, every Congrega- 
tional Pastor set forth from the pulpit our obligations to the Pilgrim Fathers, the influence of their 
faith and polity upon the character of the nation ; and the duty we owe to the memory and print iples 
of the Fathers, to maintain, enlarge and transmit the inheritance we have receivel at their handj." 

This resolution sufficiently expliins the reason for the following discourses. In the publication of 
them, I have added a little to the historical matter for the fuller exposition of the subject.] 






n-??;^! 



DISCOURSE I. 

These all died in faitb, not Lavius received the promises, but having seen them afar 
off, and were persuaded of them, aud embraced them, and confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth. — Hebrews XI : 13. 

< 

It is a grateful and a filial duty ■which I undertake to-daj, to speak 
of those venerable men from whom Ave have inherited, not only our 
Congregational faith and polity, but all that is noblest and best in our 
Political Institutions. In commemorating such men, as was truly 
said by Dr. Post, in the late Memorial Convention, at Chicago, we 
are not idolaters or man-worshippers, but we glorify the Lord of 
Hosts, whose instruments they were for the advancement of His king- 
dom, and from whom they derived their faith and principles. To 
idolize men is one thing ; to idealize them, by looking at them in the 
light of the ideas and principles they represent, is quite another. To 
do this for the Pilgrim Fathers, is what the Apostle, in the eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews, does for those heroes of faith whom he commem- 
orates, and among whom these men are worthy to be enrolled, leaving 
out of view their human errors and failings, and regarding them only 
as vehicles of a Divine power and inspiration. 

I propose to speak of our obligations to the Pilgrim Fathers, and 
to show these by considering 

I. Who the Pilgrims were, and what they did and suffered in this 
world, for the cause of God and humanity. 

II. Their character, faith and polity, and the influence of these 
upon the character of the Nation. 

III. The duty we owe to their memory and principles. 

First. Let us consider who the Pilgrims were, and whence came 
the principles for which they lived and died. A brief sketch of their 
origin and history, and some of the trials they endured before and 
during the planting of religious liberty in this new world, will be 
a fitting prelude to what may be further said of their character and 
principles. 

In this historical sketch I shall avail myself of such published docu- 
ments and memorials as are at hand, and will best illustrate the subject 
before us. 



All great movements in history, like great rivers, take tlieir rise 
far back of the age in which their greatness appears. For the rise 
of Puritanism, vre must go back to the great reformer Wycliffe, who 
lived a century and a half before the time of Luther. Born in the 
early part of the 14th century, he anticipated the discoveries of his 
more fortunate successors. He asserted the sufficiency of the Scrip- 
tures as a rule of faith. He denied the Pope's supremacy, the real 
presence in the eucharist, the validity of absolution and indulgencies, 
and the merit of penance and monastic vows. He protested against 
the ecclesiastical ceremonies, festival days, prayers of saints, and 
auricular confession. Finally, he denounced the canonical distinction 
between Priests and Bishops, and the use of set forms of prayer. 

" One thing, he declares, I boldly assert, that in the Primitive 
Church, or the time of Paul, two orders of the clergy were held suffi- 
cient — those of priests and deacons. No less certain am I, that in 
the time of Paul, presbyters and bishops were the same, as is shown in 
I Tim. iii. and Titus i." This shows tlie truth of the historian's 
assertion, that " Wycliffe was the first of Puritans, as well as of Pro- 
testants." " Nothing," says Palfrey, " came to the birth in the 16th 
century that had not lain in embryo in Wycliff's time, under the com- 
mon heart of England." 

" Though his labors did not effect an alteration in the ecclesiastical 
polity of his country, they made an extensive and permanent impres- 
sion. A numerous class of followers were raised up, by the Provi- 
dence of God, Avho were termed Lollards, and were found in most 
parts of the kingdom. These preserved the precious seed of the king- 
dom until more propitious days ; and though assailed by the fiercest 
persecutions, were enabled to hand down the sacred deposit to the 
times of the Lutheran reformation."* 

The next period in the early history of Puritanism was that of 
Henry VIII and the Reformation in England. This headstrong and 
lustful monarch, who, as Sir James Mackintosh remarks, " perhaps 
approached as nearly to the ideal standard of perfect wickedness, as 
the infirmities of human nature will allow," became the instrument 
of the Reformation not willingly but of contention, thinking to spite 
the Pope. For the reason that the Pope would not divorce him from 
Catharine, his wife, when he was tired of her, and wanted to marry 
Ann Boleyn, Henry divorced the Church of England from that of 
Rome, really founding a new Church in England of which he himself 
was the head. " In that age indeed, there seemed to be no alterna- 



*Price'a Hist, of Frot. Ron-Conform, i: 4. 



live between the supremacy of tlie Pope and the supremacy of the 
King. The minds of the best of men, as is the case with some even 
in these days, were so warped by the influence of ancient Ecclesiasti- 
cal precedents, that none dreamed of an ultimate appeal to Holy 
Scripture. * * A Church of Christ independent, as such, 

of hum;iji control and existing apart from State craft, was an idea 
almost impossible to that age. If entertained at all, it could only 
have been by men as humble in life as in spirit, such as afterwards 
rose to assert the spiritual character of the kingdom of God upon 
Earth." 

Accordingly, the King himself undertook to settle what the 
people should believe, and Avith this view, drew up a set of articles 
of religion, which, with the aid of his Parliament, were adopted as 
the law of the realm. These articles " set forth in the strongest lan- 
guage the presence of the natural body and blood of Christ in the 
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, sanctioned communion in one kind 
only, denied the right of marriage to the priesthood, enforced vows 
of chastity, allowed private masses, and declared auricular confession 
to be both expedient and necessary. The most fearful penalties were 
attached to any opposition to these doctrines. The least was the loss 
of goods ; the greatest, burning at the stake, which was the punish- 
ment for denying the first of these articles (and which some actually 
suffered at Smithfield). The law was now let loose against both Pro- 
testants and Catholics, but with peculiar vengeance against the former. 
And so the new Church was founded. The work began by one royal 
profligate was, a hundred and thirty years later, finished by another. 
Henry tlie Vlllth's natural successor in Ecclesiastical politics is 
Charles the II."* 

Thus it will be seen that the so-called Reformation in England was 
a reformation only in name. The Church, linked inseparably to the 
State, was subjected to a change of masters, but not of doctrine or 
character. This could not satisfy enlightened and truth-loving souls, 
who looked to the word of God and not to decrees of councils or par- 
liaments for their rule of faith and practice. And this brings us to 
the rise of Puritanism, proper, as a distinct ecclesiastical movement. 

John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, was the first father of Puritan 
non-conformity. " History, while it has done justice to the character 
and abilities of this eminent man, has not done similar justice to his 
opinions. He appears on its pages as a conscientious opponent of all 
ecclesiastical ceremonies and habits that are not expressly warranted 

* Skeat's Uist., Free Ch's of Eng. 3, 6. 



by Scripture, as a sufferer for his opinions on this subject, and as a 
martyr for the Protestant religion ; but he was more than this. * * 
It was his voice which first publicly proclaimed the principles of 
religious freedom. He stood alone amongst the English Protestants 
of his age, in denying the right of the State to interfere with relig- 
ion."* He says in his ' Declaration': " Touching the superior powers 
of the earth, it is not unknown to all them that hath read and 
remarked the Scripture, that it appertaineth nothing unto their office 
to make any law to govern the conscience of their subjects in religion. 
God's kingdom is a spiritual one. In this, neither Pope nor King may 
govern. He alone is the governor of His Church, and the only law- 
giver." " He told the people in words proclaimed at Paul's Cross, 
and throughout various parts of the kingdom, that their consciences 
were bound only by the word of God, and that they might with it, 
judge 'Bishop, Doctor, preacher and curate.' " 

The Puritan element, of which this was the distinguishing principle, 
did not at first separate itself from the established Church, but sought 
to work its reformation while staying within it ; and it was only 
through much tribulation, and after long continued struggles, that the 
principle of religious liberty worked itself clear, and the best and 
purest spirits of the English Church became gradually separated from 
the baser portion, as gold is separated from the dross in the fire of 
trial and persecution, or as wheat is separated from the chaff by the 
tribulation of the threshing floor. 

The first separation of this kind occurred during the reign and 
under the persecution of the bloody Queen Mary. Fox, author of the 
book of Martyrs, records " how that besides those worthy masters and. 
confessors which were burned in Queen Mary's days, and otherwise tor- 
mented, many (both students and others) fled out of the land to the 
number of 800, and became several congregations at Wesel, Frank- 
fort, Geneva, &c." At these places, and especially at Geneva, they 
became familiar with forms of worship and of discipline more com- 
pletely purified from Popery than the forms which had as yet been 
adopted or permitted in their native country. 

When the reign of Queen Elizabeth commenced, the exiles returned, 
expecting that this Protestant Princess would carry out the principles 
of the Reformation, or at least, tolerate their own ; but in this they 
were disappointed. 

" Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, and iu December 
of that year, issued a proclamation forbidding any change of the 

*lbi(t 8. 



forms of religion until they sJtouhl he determined aecordiyuj to law. 
Immunity from Papal persecution was obtained by the change o^ 
rulers, but no freedom to worship according to conscience, cither as 
it regarded Roman Catholic or Protestants. This is a point too much 
overlooked, and hence much confusion as to religious parties formed 
at this juncture. The Queen was a good friend to Protestantism as 
opposed to Popery, but the bitter opponent of all Protestantism which 
did not square with her own and that of the State. The Act of 
Supremacy, declaring her the head of the Church, passed in the first 
year of her reign, followed closely by the Act of Uniformity, requir- 
ing all to worship on the State pattern and in the Parish Churches. 
Early in 1562, the work was completed by the adoption of the Arti- 
cles of Religion, and from this date, the Church of England being 
completely established by law, avc may conveniently trace that ' Sep- 
aration which, with more or less distinctness, can be traced through 
all subsequent English History to this day." 

Before tracing the history of this separation, let me speak of the 
difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims, who are often con- 
founded by many persons. This difference was not one of name merely, 
but wide and fundamental. It involved nothing less than the Avhole 
question of enforced or free religion. The dift'crence between the 
two parties was considered so fundamental and irreconcilable, that 
the one party put the other to death for their diversity of sentiment, 
until the pei'secuted party fled to a new world to secure that freedom 
of worship which was forbidden in the old. 

The Puritans were reformers who remained in the Church of Eng- 
land, men of pure and lofty religious principle, but somewhat narrow 
and bigoted in their spirit ; who partook of the intolerance of the age 
and the Church to Avhich they belonged ; whose fiery zeal against the 
corruptions of their times was not tempered with the meekness of 
wisdom, and made them iconoclasts in the Church, and revohitionisls 
and regicides in the State. The Pilgrims were Separatists or Inde- 
pendents, who did not remaiii in the Church of England, and who in 
coming out from all bondage to ecclesiastical tyranny and corruption, 
had not only come into a larger liberty, but into a larger tolerance 
and charity. Their residence abroad, also, especially in Holland had 
developed in them wider views, and a more catholic spirit then pre- 
vailed at that time in England, which they carried with them to the 
New World. This is to be remembered in judging of the character 
of the early fathers of New England. New England was settled by 
two classes of Englishmen, who founded distinct and separate cole- 



8 

nies. The Pilgrim Fathers who founded the Plymouth Colony, and 
who planted and gave type to our institutions, were not Puritans, but 
Separatists, men of larger and freer and more catholic spirit, than 
the Puritans who came after, and settled in Salem and Boston. They 
were not persecutors either of the Baptists or Quakers. The Old 
Colony men, the men of Plymouth Rock, were not Episcopalians or 
Presbyterians, but Congregationalists, as the Puritans afterwards 
became. They were not proselytes from the Church of England, but 
Congregationalists from the start, bringing their principles and their 
Church with them, and so were the true Fathers of our ecclesiastical 
and civil polity, as we shall see hereafter.* 

Thus much by way of anticipation. Let us now trace a little more 
distinctly the origin or evolution of Independency, as distinct from 
Puritanism. 

" Side by side with the records of a powerful State establishment, 
we find the frequent, though incidental, mention of a band of humble, 
earnest ' Separatists,' as they were termed, protesting against errors 
which the Reformation in England had failed to remove, — against the 
assumption by any human power, however august, of that headship 
which belonged of right to Christ, and pleading for permission to 
worship according to the simplicity of form and practice of the prim- 
itive Christians. 

*' Such were the Separatists, at that day undivided on the subject 
of baptism and other questions which have given rise to sects having 
various names. They constituted, with the Roman Catholics, the 



♦The distinction, liere pointed out, between the Puritans and tho Pilgrims, which many historian* 
have been slow to recognize, and ignorance of which has led to the accusation, still widely believed, 
that the Pilgrims persecuted the Quakers, is very ably and abundantly shown by Mr. Benj. Scott, F. B« 
AS , in a Lecture entitled " The Pilgrim Fathers neither Puritans nor Persecutors" delivered at the Friends' 
Institute, London, Jan. ISfifi. He shows, by the most conclusive historical proofs, that " the Pilgrim 
Fathers and their precursors in England, Holland, and at Plymouth, were Separatitts, and had no 
connection with the Puritans, who subsequently settled in New England, at Salem and Boston, in 
Massachusetts ; that the principles and practices of tho two parties, confounded by some careless 
writers, differed essentially. The Separatists ever contending for freedom of conscience and separation 
from the powers of the State, while the Puritans remained in connection and communion with tho 
State Church, and held both in England and New England that the State should bo authoritative in 
matters of religion. Heuco tho anti-Christian and intolerant acts Of the Puritan Colony to the Separa- 
tists, Ualph bmyth, Roger Williams, Isaac Robinson, John Cudworlh, and Timothy Uathorley. Hence, 
also, on the arrival of the Friends, tho cruel laws for whipping, banishing, and execnting for matters 
of religions faith and practice." He shows that " the Separatist Colony of Plymouth had no share in 
this intolerant conduct during the lives of the Pilgrim Fathers, and moreover, that they treated kindly, 
and received into their Church, both Smyth and Roger Williams, when forbidden to worship freely 
elaewhere, and that after the death of the Pilgrim Fathers their sons and soccessors— some of them, 
at least — inherited their principles, and advocated toleration of the Friends, refusing to be parties to 
the persecuting laws then enacted."' Persecution of the Friends by the Pilgrim Fathers was chronolog- 
ically impracticable. George Fox, a good authority on sach a point, says: "In 1650, many went 
bvyond sea, where troth alio sprang up ; and in 1856 it br«ke forth in Amtriea." 



only persons then objecting in England to the Church as by law estab- 
lished. They formed themselves, as did the early disciples, into dis- 
tinct associations or Churches, chose their own teachers and regulated 
their own affairs. The OJiurch, they maintained, was a spiritual 
association, and should consequently be separate from the world and 
its rulers, and should be governed only by the laws of Christ as given 
in the New Testament; hence their distinctive appellation. Their 
simplicity of sentiments and moral conduct rendered them unpopular 
in a corrupt age ; their opposition to an endowed Church made them 
obnoxious to the clergy, who held to the wealth and honors of the 
State ; their recognition of Christ as the sole head of the Church 
gave mortal offense to the ruling powers, and afforded opportunity 
for charges of disloyalty and sedition, and directed against them the 
persecuting power of an intolerant court and hierarchy. In a word 
they were the ' Nazarenes ' of the English Reformation — were re- 
garded ' as the filth and off-scourings of all things.' They worshipped 
only in secret places, — in ships moored in the river Thames, — in 
obscure corners in the city, in the woods and fields which surrounded 
London and some other towns. We should know little concerning 
them but for the depositions of their relentless enemies, and the noble 
defenses of their principles which persecution called forth, and but 
for the providential preservation of such documents by their oppo- 
nents. They dwelt almost alone, and were scarcely regarded as part 
of the nation. 

" Of course a term of reproach for the party was soon forthcoming. 
The occasion was furnished by one Robert Brown, who having ably 
advocated their principles, proved unfaithful to them, and accepted a 
living in Northamptonshire. This conduct of Brown caused to adhere 
to them the term of ' Brownists,' by which they were long known in 
history."* 

To Robert Brown is usually ascribed the honor of founding the 
denomination, called variously Separatists, Independents, and Con- 
gregationalists. But whether this honor justly belongs to him, is a 
question admitting of historical doubt. That he was an able advocate 
and expounder of their principles is conceded ; but that he fairly 
represented them in his life and character, no one, except their ene- 
mies, will pretend. " He takes a place in history, from his connec- 
tion with a great religious movement, which he by no means originated, 
and which he did quite as much to prejudice as to promote. From 

• Chamberlaia Scott ; tit tupra, p. 8, 9. 



10 

him the rigid Separatists from the Church of England, who advocated 
the independence of each Christian congregation in respect to all 
others were nickna,med Brownists."* 

How tliis name was regarded by Robinson, the noble pastor of the 
Pilgrim Church at Leyden, and the truest representative of the spirit 
of the Pilgrims, may be seen from the counsel which he gave to them 
in his celebrated parting letter. " Another thing hee commended to 
us, was, that wee should use all meanes to avoid and shake oft" the 
name of Bi'oivnist, being a mere nick-name and brand to make religion 
odious, and the professors of it to the Christian world, "f 

"Now for the other party which arose at this juncture. The Eng- 
lish Reformers, many of whom returned from exile on the accession 
of Elizabeth, were greatly disappointed to find the new establishment 
virtually settled, and that the principles of the Reformation had not 
been carried further in its constitution. The greater part of them, 
however, accepted the change, and with it the Royal Supremacy, 
Uniformity of Worship, and the Articles of Religion. Some took 
this course for the sake of peace and unity, others from less worthy 
motives ; all of them, however, hoping to eftect, in due time, further 
reformation — a hope which was never to be gratified. This reform- 
ing or Evangelical party within the Establishment were termed ' Pur- 
itajis,' and are known in history as the ^ Early Puritans,' to distin- 
guish them from a party which existed later in history, particularly 
at and after the period of the Commonwealth. 

" We have thus the origin of two parties formed at the birth of the 
Church of England, — parties diftering widely both in principles and 
practice ; the Early Puritans within the Establishment, and the Sepa- 
ratists, or Brownists outside of that organization, declining to recog- 
nize the spiritual claims of the English Sovereign, and contending 
for the exclusively spiritual character of His Church who had afiirmed, 
'My kingdom is not of this world. ' "J; 

Five years after this period, which marks the date of the State 
Church establishment and the origin of the Separatists, we have a dis- 
tinct historical notice of a company of Christians meeting at Plum- 
mcr's Hall, in London, who were brought before the Lord Mayor, 
and on the 20th of June, 1567 committed to the Bridewell, a prison 
still existing in Blackfriars. 

* Pnlfrey'8 Hist, of New'Eng. p, 123. t \Vinslow'H Uypocrisit b'nmasktd, 97. 

I Chamberlain Scott, p. 8, 9. 



11 

" Gathered in the prison around the New Testament which the 
Reformation had placed in their hands, this little band spelled out, by 
the aid of the Holy Spirit's teaching, the spirituality of the true 
Church, its independence of the powers of the world, and its conse- 
quent right to self-government, subject to the laws of Christ. They 
accordingly formed themselves in the prison into a separate Society 
or Church of believers on the New Testament model, selecting pastors 
and officers. The original document, with the names of all the par- 
ties appended, has been recently found in the State Paper Office. 
Richard Fitz, pastor [the first pastor of the first Independent Church 
in England,] the deacon and several members died of the prison 
plague ; but though deprived of their leaders, they continued to meet 
in private houses after their liberation."* 

Next in order of date we meet with Robert Brown, who gave his 
name to the party, but proved unfaithful to his principles. 

liobert Harrison, a friend and companion of Brown, with cour- 
age and fidelity grasped the banner which Brown threw away, until 
in 1582 a law was enacted making it treason to worship except in 
accordance Avith the form prescribed by law. Upon this Harrison 
escaped to Middleburg, in Zealand, and became pastor of a Church 
of refugees from Protestant bigotry in high places. 

The first martyrs to Independency were JonN Copping and Elias 
Thacker, who in 1576 Avere apprehended and kept some years in 
prison. They were at last brought to trial and convicted of the capi- 
tal ofi"ensc of circulating Separatist books. These martyrs died at 
Bury St. Edmunds, acknowledging the supremacy of the Queen, but 
maintaining that in spiritual matters they owed allegiance to ' another 
king, one Jesus.' 

William Dennis, ' a godly man,' (so says the record) was excu- 
ted shortly afterward in Norfolk, for the same offense. 

Next in the noble succession we find the names of John Greenwood 
and Henry Barrowe, two earnest men, fellow students of Cambridge, 
who associated themselves with the scattered Separatists when their 
cause was at the lowest and apparently hopeless. Being arrested 
and imprisoned in the " Clink," they contrived, like Paul and Bun- 
yan, to omit light from their prison cell, and to write in conformation 
of the truth for whicli they suffered. "Dropping their scraps of 
manuscripts into the jug from which thoy drank, these were conveyed 
day by (hxy, by ' Cicely,' a faithful handmaid of Mrs. Greenwood, to 

•Jbidp.lO. 



12 

a trusty friend, \vlio sent them to Dort, in Holland, where they were 
printed, and conveyed to the Separatist brethren. Thus the Bible 
and the printing press supplied the place of the oral teaching which 
the State had suppressed." 

Being brought to trial through evidence obtained by the Puritan 
Clergy — who were employed discreditably as spies under the order of 
the Bishop of London — they were charged with having written books 
to lessen the Queen's prerogative in matters spiritual, and with claim- 
ing the right of a Church to manage its own affairs. On the 23d of 
March, 1592, they were condemned to die, and after several reprieves 
and vain entreaties to save their lives by recantation, were executed 
April 6th, 1593. A single extract from an extant letter of Barrowe's 
proves that it was simple liberty of conscience which these men claimed, 
and for which their lives were sacrificed. It proves also how thorough- 
ly they understood the principle of religious toleration, Avhich neither 
the Church of England nor the Puritans had yet learned. 

"Deal tenderly," he writes, " with tender consciences ; we are yet 
persuaded that we should show ourselves disobedient and unthankful 
to our Master except we should hold fast this cause. * * 
Why should our adversaries wish to persuade the civil magistrates to 
deal with us by the Sword, and not by the Word, by prisons and not 
by persuasions ? As for dungeons, irons, close prison, torment, hun- 
ger, cold, want of means to maintain families, — these may cause some 
to make shipwreck of a good conscience, or to lose their life ; hut they 
are not fit ways to persuade holiest me7i to any truth or dissuade them 
from errors.'' 

This roll of honor would be incomplete without adding the name of 
John Penry, another remarkable man, a Welshman by birth, and 
educated at Oxford, who joined the party just before the execution of 
Barrowe and Greenwood. 

Having aroused persecution by his honestly expressed opinion as 
to the evils of the established system, a warrant was issued for his 
arrest, and he fled to Scotland with his wife and four infant children. 
Queen Elizabeth followed him with an autograph letter to the Scotch 
King insisting on his extradition. Proclamation was issued accord- 
ingly jfoJ^' Ws apprehension, and death denounced against any who 
should afford him food or shelter. With a price on his head this in- 
trepid Evangelist traveled from Scotland to London, and cast in his 
lot with the poor Separatists of Southwark. He was soon discovered, 



13 

however, and cast into prison ; and soon after condemned to die for 
imputed treason, in May, 1593. Letters written by him shortly be- 
fore his death are extant, which for true pathos, tender affection to 
his wife and children, and for resolute determination to lay down his 
life for the truth, are without their equal in the annals of Martyr- 
ology. One extract must suffice. Being pressed to save his life by 
recantation, he replied : '■'■ If my blood ivere an ocean sea, and every 
drop thereof were a life unto me, I ivould give them all for the main- 
tenance of this very confession. Far be it from me thai either the 
saving of an earthly life, the regard which I ought to have to the 
desolate outward state of a friendless ividow and four poor fatherless 
children, or any other thing, should enforce me by denial of God's 
truth to perjure mine own souV* 

Such was the spirit of that heroic band to which the Pilgrims be- 
longed, of whom the world was not worthy ; and with such a great 
price have we obtained the religious liberty we now enjoy. 

AVe conic now to the rise and progress of the Mayflower Church, 
the particular seed which God has chosen to plant in this wilderness 
that it may become a garden. This Church was as small and humble 
in its beginnings as the mustard seed of the Gospel. It took its rise 
at Scrooby, a village in Nottinghamshire, in the north of England, in 
the house of William Brewster, afterwards known as Elder Brews- 
ter, of the Plymouth Colony. " With a mind enlarged by study and 
travel, he made the acquaintance of Smith, Clyfton, Robinson, and 
other godly ministers in that and the neighboring counties, who were 
conscientiously opposed to the established Church ; and when the 
policy of deprivation, confiscation, fine and imprisonment was fully 
entered upon by government to enforce conformity, he cast in his lot 
with them, and welcomed them to his house (a spacious manor-house 
of the Archbishop of York, leased to Brewster by Samuel Sandys, 
eldest son of the Archbishop), and in its ample spaces offered them 
that Sabbath liberty of prophesying which the Churches no longer 
afforded. Gathering together the elect and precious few from the 
country round about who thought as they thought, and believed what 
they believed, and were willing to dare what they dared to do ; he, 
with Clyfton and Robinson and those others, some time during 1606, 
formally, to use Bradford's own words, — 'joyned themselves (by a 
covenant of the Lord) into a Church estate, in ye fellowship of ye 
Gospel, to walke in all His wayes, made known, or to be made known 

* Scott, p. 14, 16. 



14 

unto them, according to their heist endeavors, whatsoever it shotdd cost 
them, the Lord assisting them."* 

This little Church at Scrooby was at first under the care of Richard 
Cljfton, a Puritan minister who had joined the Separatist party, re- 
linquishing his living at Worksop. Clyfton afterwards retired to Hol- 
land, and was succeeded by John Robinson, M. A., who was after- 
wards pastor of the Church at Leyden, and organized the departure 
of the Pilgrims from that place to their home in the New World. 
While pastor at Scrooby, Robinson received into the little society 
there a youth named William Bradford, who also went out as one 
of the Pilgrim Fathers, became Governor, in course of time, of the 
Plymouth Colony in New England, and the historian of the Pilgrims. 
We have thus three of the leaders of the Pilgrims — Pastor Robinson, 
Elder Brewster and Governor Bradford — connected with the Separa- 
tist Church at Scrooby, which appears to have been a branch of that 
founded at Gainsborough by John Smyth of Southwark. That all 
these men were Separatists from conviction appears from their works 
and letters still extant. Robinson particularly speaks of the painful 
struggles which he experienced in breaking from his friends of the 
Puritan party. f 

" But after these things (continues the record,) they could not long 
continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted 
on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in 
comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were 
taken and clapt into prison, others had their houses beset and watched 
night and day, and hardly escaped their hands ; and the most were 
fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of 
their livelihood. Yet these and many other sharper things which 
afterward befel them, were no other than they looked for, and there- 
fore were the better prepared to bear them by the assistance of God's 
grace and spirit. Yet seeing themselves thus molested, and that there 
was no hope of their continuance there, by a joint consent they re- 
solved to go into the low countries, where they heard was freedom of 
Religion for all men ; as also how sundry others from London, and 
other parts of the land, had been exiled and persecuted for the same 
cause, and were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam, and in other 
places of the land. So after they had continued together about a 
year, and kept their meetings every Sabbath, in one place or other, 
* * they seeing they could no longer continue in that condi- 

*SsbbbaUi at Home, March, 1867. f Bobinson's Works, vol. ii. p. 51, 52. Item, ScoUp. 17. 



tion they resolved to get over iuto Holland as they could, which was 
in the years 1607 and 1608."* 

It is worthy of note that the idea of exchanging persecution and 
death in England for exile to some foreign shore originated with the 
martyrs Barrowe and Penry. The former, in 1592, bequeathed a 
fund to aid the persecuted Church " in the event of emigration,'' while 
the latter, in his last letter, urged "the brethren to prepare for 
banishment in an unbroken companT/." 

Before leaving this first home of the Pilgrims, let me allude to a 
remarkable letter from Johii Smyth, addressed to the Church at 
Scrooby, of which he was pastor. In it he addresses them words 
which by the light of subsequent events we may almost regard as 
proplietic. " You are few in number," he writes, " yet, considering 
that the Kingdom of Heaven is as a grain of mustard seed, small in 
the beginning, I do not doubt that you may in time groiv up to a mul- 
titude, and be, as it were, a great tree full of fruitful branches."! 

Thus they obeyed our Lord's command — " And when they perse- 
cute you in one city (or country), flee ye into another." That the 
country to which they fled was one that had great attractions for 
them, may be understood from the fact that several English compa- 
nies of exiles had already gone over there before them ; and especially 
from the religious toleration that existed there. " These Provinces 
(the Low Countries) were of opinion not only tliat all religions ought 
to be tolerated, but that all restraint in matters of religion was as 
detestable as the Inquisition itself; and accordingly they maintained 
that nobody erred wilfully, or could believe against his conscience, 
that none but God could inspire right notions iuto the minds of men ; 
that no religion was agreeable to God but such as proceeded from a 
willing heart. Experience had also taught them that heterodox opin- 
ions could not so effectually be rooted out by human power or violence 
as by length of time." X 

I pass over the difficulties and perils they encountered in getting 
over into Holland — " For though they could not stay, yet were they 
not suflered to goe, but ye ports and havens were shut against them, 
so as they were faine to seek secrete means of conveance, and to 
bribe and fee ye mariners, and give extraordinarie rates for their 



♦Bradford, Tlyra. Plant, Id. + Vide Chamberlain Scott, p. 10, 1i. 

X Brant's Hist. Kef. in Low Ouantries, i: SOS. 



16 

passages. And yet were they often times betrayed (many of them), 
and both they and their goods intercepted and surprised, and thereby 
put to great trouble and charge. * * In the end, notwith- 
standing all these storms of opposition, they all got over at length, 
some at one time and some at another, and some in one place and 
some in another, and mette together againe according to their desires, 
with no small rejoicing."* Robinson and Brewster we are told, " were 
of the last, and stayed to help the weakest over before them." 

Arriving at Amsterdam, they soon found that was not the place 
for them on account of difficulties existing between the companies 
already there. " So they prudently resolved to remove thence before 
a bad matter was made worse." It is on record in Leyden that John 
Robinson and 'some of the members of the new reformed religion, 
born in the kingdom of Great Britain, to the number of 100 persons, 
or thereabouts, men and women,' petitioned the magistrates for leave 
to come to Leyden ' by the first of May next,' to have the freedom of 
the city ' in carrying on their trades without being burdensome to any 
one.' This petition being cordially responded to, they removed about 
the first of May, 1609 to Leyden. 

But it was not the design of Providence that this precious seed 
should take root in Holland. " After they had lived in this city some 
eleven or twelve years, * * those prudent governors (Rob- 
inson and Brewster) with sundry of the sagest members, began to 
think of removal to some other place. Not out of any new fangled- 
ness or such like giddy humor, by which men are oftentimes trans- 
ported to their great hurt and danger, but for sundrie weightie and 
solid reasons." Among these reasons were, First, The ' hardness of 
the place and countrie,' which they found to be such that " few in 
comparison would come to them, and fewer that would bide it out and 
continue with them." Secondly, That "though the people bore all these 
difficulties very cheerfully and with a resolute courage, yet old age 
was beginning to steal on many of them, and within a few years more 
they would be in danger to scatter or sink under their burdens, or 
both." Thirdly, They labored under great disadvantage in regard to 
the education and training of their children, amidst the manifold 
temptations of the place, whereby they " were drawn away by evil 
examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting ye raines 
off their neks, and departing from their parents. * * 

♦Bradford's "Plimoth Flantstion." 



So that they saw their postei'itie would bo in danger to degenerate 
and be corrupted." 

" Lastly (and which was not least) a great hope and inward zeal 
they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some 
way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the 
Kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world ; yea, though 
they should be but even as stepping stones unto others for the per- 
forming of so great a Avork.'"* 

How such an undertaking looked to them two hundred and fifty 
years ago, wo from one stand point can hardly conceive ; but after a 
full deliberation and discussion of the matter, and many particular 
things answered and alleged on both sides, it was fully concluded by 
the major part, to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by 
the best means they could. 

Negotiations were opened with certain " merchant adventurers" in 
London, who held chartered grants from the Crown of portions of 
the New Continent. After many difficulties and protracted delays 
with many escapes of imprisonment, the terms were settled, and it 
was arranged that all Avho were ready should go out under the leader- 
ship of Elder Brewster, while Robinson should follow with the remain- 
der of the party at a future day. 

The negotiations, begun in 1617, did not conclude till 1G20. A 
vessel of sixty tons — the "Speedwell," — was purchased in Holland 
upon receipt of the intelligence that all was ready in London. The 
Church then, we are told, '' lield a solemn meeting and day of humil- 
iation to seek the Lord for his direction." Robinson took for his 
text — 1 Samuel, xxiii. 3, 4: "And David's men said unto him, see 
we be afraid here in Judah ; how much more, if we come to Keilah 
against the hosts of the Philistines. Then David asked counsel of 
the Lord again." When the ship was ready they had another day 
of solemn humiliation, their pastor speaking to them from Ezra viii. 
21 : ^^And there, at the river by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that 
we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of him a right 
way for us, and for our childri>n, and for all our snbstaiice." " The 
time being come to depart," Bradford tells us, " they were accompa- 
nied by most of their brethren to a town sundry miles off, called Delft 
Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. So they left that 
goodly and pleasant city .which had been their resting place near 
twelve years; but they knew they tvere Pilgrims, and looked not 

'Bradford ; ut tup. 22. 



18 

mucli oil those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their 
dearest country, and (-{uieted their spirits. * * 

" Sundry also came from ximsterdam to see them shipped, and to 
take their leave of them. That night was spent with little sleep by 
the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse and 
other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day, the 
wind being fair, they went aboard, and their friends with them, where 
truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting ; to see 
what sighs and sobs did sound amongst them ; what tears did gush 
from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each heart ; that sundry 
of the Dutch strangers that stood on the quay as spectators, could 
not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such 
lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide 
which stays for no man, calling them away that were loath to depart, 
their reverend pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with 
Lira, with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers 
to the Lord and his blessing. And then with mutual embraces, and 
many tears, they took their leave one of another : which proved to 
be the last leave to many of them."* 

Art has commemorated this interesting and pathetic scene in the 
well known picture of the " Embarkation of the Pilgrims." There is 
only one other scene in history to which it may be likened : that of 
Paul kneeling on the beach at Ephesus, and praying with the Elders 
'of the Church, while they " fell on his neck and wept sore, sorrowing 
most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his 
face no more." 

The " Speedwell " arrived safely at Southampton, where it fell in 
with the " Mayflower " with the party from London, and both vessels . 
put into Plymouth. The " Speedwell " was here found to be unsea- 
worthy, and the whole party of 102 Pilgrims, with the crew, sailed on 
the Gth of September in the " Mayflower," a vessel of 180 tons 
burden. 

Little is recorded of the incidents of the voyage. The first part 
was favorably made. As the wanderers approached the American 
Continent, they encountered storms which their overburdened vessel 
Avas scarcely able to sustain. At early dawn of the sixty-fourth day 
of their voyage (Nov. 9th, 0. S.,) they came in sight of the white 
sand-banks of Cape Cod. In pursuance of their original purpose, 
they veered to the south, but by the middle of the day found them- 
selves "among perilous shoals and breakers," which caused them to 

* Braiiford'8 " Plimoth Plantation," 58. 



19 

retrace their course. Two days after, they drew up and signed, in 
the cabin of the " Mayflower," the Constitution of the future Colony, 
their celebrated Social Compact, which was the germ, as it contained 
the principle of our Republican government.* 

After exploring the coast in their little shallop, and sending several 
expeditions inland, they entered Plymouth harbor under the lee of 
Clark's Island where they kept the Sabhath ; and at length on the 
memorable 21st of December, they landed on Plymouth Hock, and 
stepped forth on the frozen hwifree soil, henceforth to be their home. 

Did time permit, we might follow the history of the new Colony 
as they entered on the formidable work of making a settlement on 
that bleak and inhospitable shore, in the dead of winter, with an 
unknown and howling wilderness around them, filled with savage 
beasts and more savage men. A glance at their sorrows is afforded 
by the fact recorded by the historian, that in two or three months' 
time half of their company died, "sometimes two or three of a day ;" 
and of those that remained, in the time of most distress, there were 
but six or seven sound persons to wait upon the sick and dying. 

" By that time their corn was planted, all their victuals were spent, 
and they were only to rest on God's providence ; at night, not many 
times knowing where to have a bit of anything for the next day. And 
so, as one well observed, had need to pray, that God would give them 
their daily bread, above all people in the Avorld. Yet they bore these 
wants with great patience and alacrity of spirit, and that for so long a 
time as the most part of two years, "f 

" When the Anne arrived, the best dish they could present their 
friends with was a lobster, or a piece of fish, without bread or any- 
thing else but a cup of fair spring water. "| 

" Brewster, the ruling Elder, lived for many months together with- 
out bread, and frequently on fish alone. With nothing but oysters 
and clams before him, he, with his family, would give thanks that 

*Tho following is a copy of this remarkable docament ; the flrst compact for a fraa goTernment 
known to history. " In the name of Qod, amoo. Wo, whose names are underwritten, the loyal sub- 
jects of our dread soTereign lord. King James, by the grace of (iod, of Great Britain, France, and Ire- 
land King, Defender of the Faith, &c., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of 
the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the 
northern parts of Virginia, do by theco presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and 
one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together Into a civil body politic, for our better 
ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by virtno hereof to enact, con- 
stitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officos, from time to 
time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of tho colony; anto which 
we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof, wo have hereunder subscriber onr 
names, at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of tho reign of onr sovereign lord, King James, 
of Sngland, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini 1620." 
t Bradford, 13C. % Ibid. 146. 



20 

they could ' suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures 
hid in the sands.' Whenever a deer was taken, it was divided amongst 
the whole company. It is said that they were once reduced to a pint 
of corn, which being equally divided, gave to each a proportion of 
five kernels, which was parched and eaten."* 

Through such tribulation did these godly men enter into the King- 
dom of God ; with such sufferings and sacrifices did these fathers and 
mothers of the nation purchase for us that goodly inheritance which 
we possess. 

The question may naturally be asked, and it has been asked before, 
how it happened, that a company of wanderers, without military force> 
and with little wealth — without the sanction of a royal charter, and 
the power of a parent government to back them, could endure such 
trials, and sustain themselves so long without tumults and commo- 
tions ; why, in short, such a feeble band, whose numbers Avere daily 
thinned by disease and death, could succeed in planting this soil, 
which no trading adventurers were ever able to do. For it is on 
record that " several attempts were made to plant New England from 
worldly motives, but they all proved abortive." This question finds 
its answer in the 7'eligious character of the Colony. Worldly objects 
were with them secondary, and political ambition found no place 
among them. Religious /az'^/t enabled them to do and endure, under 
a sense of duty, and for the sake of God and humanity, what no mere 
selfish purpose was ever yet able to accomplish. They were men that 
feared God, and could lay down their lives for a principle ; and so 
they lived and " died in faith, not having received the promises, but 
having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced 
them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth." 

As we contrast our surroundings of comfort and plenty with their 
sufferings and privations, let us lift our hearts in gratitude to the God 
of our fathers, who has given us such ancestors and such an inherit- 
ance. 

"These all having obtained a good report through faith, received 
not the promise, God having provided some better things for us, that 
they without us should not be made perfect." 

* Baylies' Hist. New Plym , i : 121. 



DISCOURSE II. 

These all died in faith, not having: received the promises, hut havint; seen them afar 
ofl', and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, uud conlcBsed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth. — Jltbrcics XI : 13. 

Having shown in my morning's discourse who the Pilgrims were, 
and whence came the principles for which thej lived and died ; and 
having traced their history from the little Church gathered in Brews- 
ter's house in Scrooby to their exile in Leyden under the pastoral 
care of Eobinson, and their emigration thence in 1620 to Plymouth 
Rock, with a glance at the trials and sufferings they underwent for 
righteousness' sake, and for the planting of religious liberty on these 
shores, — it remains now to consider their Character and Principles, 
and the influence which these have had on the character of the nation. 

AVhat then is the secret of the Pilgrims, which has made them such 
a power in history, and especially in our own history I 

The distinguishing characteristic of the Pilgrims, that which lies at 
the foundation of their character, and is the essential principle of all 
they were, and all they did, is their religious faith. The Pilgrims 
were eminently men of faith. This is shown in the motive which 
brought them hither, and in all their precedent and subsequent history. 
If it was " by faith " that " Abraham, when he was called to go out 
into a place which he should afterward receive for an inheritance, 
obeyed, and he went out not knowing whither he went," — it was by 
the same divine principle that the I'ilgrims emigrated to this new world. 
In the words of Cotton Mather, " These good people were now satis- 
fied that they had as plain a command of Heaven to attempt a removal 
as ever their father Abraham had for his leaving the Chaldean terri- 
tories ; and it was nothing but such a satisfaction that could have 
carried them through such otherwise insuperable difficulties as they 
met withal. " 

They obeyed God in this act no less than if they had received an 
express and audible command ; and the will of God was none the less 



22 

clear to them because revealed inaudibly in the conscience. In obey- 
ing the call of duty, or what they were thoroughly persuaded was 
such, instead of the call of interest or worldly policy, they gave out- 
ward testimony that they were actuated by religious faith ; as ' the 
great hope and inward zeal' which inspired them was evidence to 
themselves. "If the Lord," says Oliver Cromwell, in one of his let- 
ters, " have in any measure persuaded his people, as generally He 
hath, of the lawfulness, nay of the duty [of any action] — this persua- 
sion prevailing upon the heart is /a^Y7i ; and the more the difficulties 
are, the greater the faith." 

They went out, also, not knowing whither they went, save as the 
Providence of God should direct them. And in being directed to the 
Massachusetts, instead of the New Jersey shore, as they at first 
steered, we see an illustration of the divine wisdom that lies hid in 
this simple principle of faith. They had no private ambitious schemes 
of their own to fulfill, as had the first settlers of Virginia, or the more 
recent adventurers in California and Australia. They did not come 
here for gain but for conscience sake. Hence they did not lay down 
beforehand the exact path of their pilgrimage, or fill up the map of 
their enterprise by their own human sagacity and foresight ; but left 
it for God. to determine their future destiny, guided only by the light 
of duty, and holding on with an unrelaxable grasp to those great, 
everlasting and immutable pnncijples which they carried within them. 
Lifted thus above mere temporal and accommodating policies and tor- 
tuous rules of worldly prudence, and shone upon by the calm clear 
light of faith, which was to them a pillar of cloud by day and 
of fire by night, — they stand apart in their character, like Abraham, 
more allied to God than to the rest of mankind. 

And this act of pilgrimage, in its very isolation from all earthly in- 
terests and motives, is invested with a moral sublimity and grandeur 
equalled only by that of the father of the faithful. 

The same sublime faith which moved and guided their pilgrimage 
hither, also supported them in all in their sojourn in this land of 
promise, as in a strange counti-y. If they suffered in consequence of 
their faith, suffering is the penalty, or rather the reward, which faith, 
always brings after it, and which all true heroes of faith, from Moses to 
Christ, have chosen in preference to worldly rewards. " By faith 
Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing 
rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season." This was what the Pilgrims chose, 
and pledged themselves to, when they "joyned themselves into a 



23 

churcli estate in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all Ilis ways 
made known or to be made known unto them, accordiii" to their best 
endeavors, whatever it should cost them." So that their historian, 
Bradford, truthfully says in speaking of their sufferings : *' Yet these 
and many other sharper things which afterwards befel them, ivere no 
other than lohat they looked for, and therefore were the better pre- 
pared to bear them by the assistance of God's grace and spirit." 

Therefore, when the practical business of clearing a settlement and 
laying the foundations of a State had succeeded to the ideal life of 
the voyage ; when they began to encounter the stern realities of a 
pioneer life in the wilderness, Avith a wide ocean lying between them 
and all supplies ; when disease fell among them laying their dearest 
companions in the grave, and carrying off in two or three months 
more than half their number ; when the savage foe, with tomahawk 
and scalping knife was lurking behind, and famine was before, staring 
them in the face ; when to all earthly appearance the enterprise of 
establishing a religious colony was proving a failure ; — did they then 
abandon this great hope, and leave the ark of God in tiie wilderness 
whither they had brought it ? No ! They rallied around it with 
closer devotion, turning from their visible discouragements to their 
invisible Leader and Spiritual Rock. They fasted and prayed in the 
little churches they had planted, till deliverance came. And it did 
come, sometimes almost as by miracle, like God's answer to the pray- 
ers of Moses in the wilderness. Manna fell upon them when faint 
and hungry, as if out of heaven ; and water gushed out of the flinty 
rock. An angel of deliverance appeared for them, and routed their 
foes before their face. The hour of their greatest peril was the hour 
of their strongest and most prevailing faith ; and their independence 
of all earthly and self-reliances wove their souls into a closer. and 
more conscious dependence on God. They endured as verily seeing 
Him who is invisible. This enabled them like their great poet and 
statesman, the puritan Milton, in the midst of physical darkness, but 
irradiated inwardly with celestial light, to 

" bate no jot 
Of heart or hojH', but still bear up, and steer 
Right onward." 

Nor was it necessity which kept them to their purpose ; for it must 
not be forgotten that "had they been mindful of that country whence 
they came, they might have had opportunity to have returned." The 
" Mayflower " stood in the harbor with sails flapping for many a 
week ; just one-half of the party died during the first winter from 



24 

privation and exposure ; and Pastor Robinson still waited in Leyden 
witli the remnant of bis flock, to receive back the colony should the 
enterprise prove a failure, — but no one returned. He himself had 
said — and he knew what was in them — '• It is not with us as with other 
men, whom small things discourage, and small discontents cause to 
wish themselves home again."* 

"Oh, strong hearts and true ! not one went back in the ' Mayflower' ! 
No, not one looked back who had set hic> baud to that ploughing." 

Thus Avere planted in faith, and nurtured by efforts that availed 
only as they were wrought in God, those institutions which we inherit, 
and which may well be called sacred. 

When we speak of the faith of the Pilgrims, it may be supposed 
that we refer simply to their religious character, and mean only that 
they were men of pure religious principle. But we mean more than 
this. Faith is not merely the root and principle of religion, it is the 
root and essence of all greatness. "Without faith, it is not only im- 
possible to please God, it is also impossible to be great, or to do great 
things. That which the world calls genius, if it be anything really 
great, or transcending ordinary human capacity, is the inspiration of 
faith, — faith in some truth or principle which it is given to the soul 
to see, and which it believes and obeys : which so far as it is believed 
and obeyed, acts as an inspiration or supernatural power within, lift- 
ing the man above himself and empowering him to do, or to speak, or 
to create great things. " All things are possible to him that helieveth." 
All the really great men that have ever lived have been men of faith, 
generally of religious f:iith, at least faith in something unseen, which 
was the secret of their power. By faith Columbus went forth adven- 
turously over an unknown ocean, to find a continent not seen as yet, 
and which he knew existed only as he believed his own convictions 
and the revelations of science. Bv faith he overcame the incredulity 
and opposition of his age, and the mutinous discontent of his own 
crew ; and by faith he unlocked the gates of the New World, and 
opened a path to it for the Pilgrims which God should afterwards 
lead hither. And so of every otlier great and sublime achievement : 
it has been done not by tlie bare force of human will, or the self- 
taught wisdom of the human mind, but by the human will empowered, 
and the human mind enlightened and quickened by this divine prin- 
ciple of Faith. 

"■ Unless above himself he can 
Erect himseir, how poor a thing is man !" 

* Young's Chruniclee, p. 61, 



25 

Unless the human soul can connect itself with something divine, 
something unseen and eternal, it can neither he great nor achieve 
greatness ; and the bond of this connection is faith. 

The most alarming sign of the present time, and which, unless coun- 
teracted, will put the seal of impotence and degradation on this age, 
spite of all its boasted 'progress,' in the prevalent tendency to unbe- 
lief, a merely scientific and materialistic knowledge, and a denial or 
ignoring of all that is unseen and eternal. This ' eclipse of faith ' 
through Avhich our age is passing, is not more surely the harbinger of 
a decline of religion in its true and spiritual sense, than it is of a de- 
cay of inspiration, of genius, of poetry and art in all but mere 
mechanical imitation, of heroism and all true greatness, and a sink- 
ing into the abyss of materialism, and, as Carlyle would say, of 
' flunkeyism,' of shams and shows, and of intellectual and moral inca- 
pacity. Whether we shall reach this depth, or be rescued from it, 
depends to a great degree on the ({uestion of how much of the spirit 
and faith of the Pilgrims is left in their descendants. 

The Pilgrims were great men because they were men of faith. They 
believed in God, in Truth and Duty, as more real and concerning to 
them than houses and lands and })hysical comforts ; and by believing 
and obeying these unseen and eternal realities, they were enabled to 
achieve great things. 

It is a part of their faith, moreover, and so of their greatness, that 
they did not deliberately plan, or consciously devise all the great and 
magnificent results which have come from their landing and history 
on these shores. This fact deserves to be pondered, for there is a 
deep and wise lesson contained in it. The wisdom of faith is not a 
human but a divine wisdom, Avhich is above the understanding of its 
possessor, as the power of faith is above his human will ; and this was 
the Avisdom of the Pilgrims. It is a fact of history that our political 
institutions, the Republican form of government, and the Democratic 
liberty of this nation have grown out of these principles of religious 
liberty asserted by them and embodied in their ecclesiastical polity ; 
yet in coming to this country they had no political designs whatever. 
They did not propose to themselves, or so much as dream of laying 
the foundations of a great republic. " Their end was religion, simply 
and only religion. Out upon the lone ocean, feeling their Avay cau- 
tiously, as it Avere, through the unknoAvn waves, exploring in their 
busy fancies and their prayers, the equally unknown future before 
them, they as little conceived that they had in their ship the germ of 
a vast republic that in tAvo centuries Avould command the respect and 



26 

attract the longing desires of the nations, as they saw with their eyes 
the lonely wastes about them whitening with the sails, and foaming 
under the swift ships of that republic, already become the first com- 
mercial power of the world."* 

But what they did not design, God designed for them and by them. 

The great results which have followed their enterprise were contained 

potentially in their principles and deeds, if not in their intention, as 

the oak is contained all invisibly and potentially in the small acorn 

which is itself unconscious of so grand a result to spring from it. 

Faith is a kind of instinct or instinctive wisdom, which works greater 

things than it purposes or knows of at the time ; like that marvellous 

instinct by which the bees build their comb in the hive according to 

the strictest rules of geometry, though not by any geometric science 

known to the bees themselves. The reason and wisdom of God is 

present in them as an unconscious power (unconscious to themselves) 

which they blindly obey. So God's wisdom and providence is present 

as a latent power Avorking in and through those who live and act by 

faith ; and the result is as much above their own individual wisdom 

as it is foreign to their purpose. Somewhat in this manner it was 

that our institutions were present in the fathers and founders of our 

history. 

" They builded better than they knew." 

" They had in their religious faith a high constructive instinct, 
raising them above their age and above themselves ; creating in them 
fountains of wisdom deeper than they consciously knew, and prepar- 
ing in them powers of benefaction that were to be discovered only by 
degrees and slowly to the coming ages."t 

There is a lesson here for the statesmen and legislators of our day. 
Faith is a better and wiser principle than expediency, in public as 
well as private affairs. To do right is the only true conservative 
policy for a nation. Pursue the straight path of manifest duty, (not 
destiny) and leave the future to God. Success is sure to crown the 
party of right in the end, since the laws and providence of God are 
committed to its support. To compromise or violate the right for 
the sake of a present success, or to avoid a present danger, is ruinous 
and radical in the extreme, since it arrays the laws of nature and 
providence against us. It is, to adopt the striking illustration of 
Coleridge, " like digging up the charcoal foundations of the temple 
of Ephcsus to burn as fuel on its altar." The way of wisdom and 
the way of greatness is ever the way of duty. 

«BuBhDell. flbid. 



27 

Another characteristic of the Pilgrims was their faith in the liberty 
and rights of Man. This was a necessary fruit of their religious 
faith in God. As they were of all men most faithful and loyal in 
their obedience to God, so they of all men were most impatient and 
independent of mere human authority. OvN'ning in their heart of 
hearts the divine supremacy of conscience, and yielding to it an abso- 
lute obedience, they disowned and cast off all other restraints. The 
first principle in their creed, a principle which is the soul of the Refor- 
mation, was that conscience is a sacred thing, which no man, be ho 
priest, presbyter or king, has any right to touch or command, but 
God only. And as conscience is the constituent of a man, it is im- 
plied in this that man is sacred, and owes allegiance therefore to no 
power or authority but divine, or that which derives its sanction and 
right to command from God. This is the principle which lies at the 
foundation of all true liberty, civil and religious, and is the germ of 
all the political progress that has been made or will be, from the 
Reformation to the end of time. It was this principle, growing 
directly out of their religious faith, and working at first as a latent 
power, which gave form and substance to that political fabric under 
whose broad arches we this day abide. It was for this that they fled 
into Holland, and thence to the shores of New England, that forsak- 
ing all else they might cleave to it and live and die for its establish- 
ment. Faith in man and in the sacred liberty of man for conscience 
sake — this was the creed written on the heart of the Pilgrims and 
embodied in their character. Hence their erect, manly, independent, 
uncompromising spirit. Hence their jealousy, not of kings only, but 
of all the trappings of royalty ; not only of priests and prelates, but 
of ceremonies and forms and rituals ; their hatred of liturgies and 
crosses, of stately churches and painted windows, and organs, as in- 
struments of worship, — of all things whatsoever that can bind the 
reason, or allure the senses, or any way interpose between the spirit 
and conscience of man and the spiritual law and worsl)ip of God. Be 
it that they erred by going to an extreme of rigidity, that they were 
too puritan in their tastes and consciences ; it was an extreme on the 
side of right, to counterbalance an opposite extreme of wrong and 
corruption. Tlicir pure and cold rigidity in morals and in worship, 
Avhich refused to kneel even in prayer, their stiff and stern and rugged 
piety, showed at lenst the stuff it was made of, no soft or doughy 
substance which could be moulded or beaten into whatever shape self- 
ish interest or priestly authority might dictate, — but like the pure 
granite aiguilles of the Alps, which rise cold and piercing into the 



I 



28 

sky, bare of any ornament but that which heaven supplies, as the sun- 
light plays on their keen and glittering summits. This aspect of the 
Puritan character is itself a grand assertion of the sacred dignity of 
man. Man is God's creature, made in his image ; and the Reason 
and Will of God communicated simply and directly to the conscience 
and reason, without any childish shows or impositions of human 
device, is what is binding on him. 

As the conscience is sacred to God alone, each individual man is 
the interpreter of the divine truth and will, responsible only to God. 
And as no authority is binding except it be divine, it follows not that 
human governments are null and void, nor, as is popularly maintained, 
that they derive their authority and power from the will of the people 
or ' the consent of the governed ', — (for what binding force or obliga- 
tion is there, least of all, what is there divine, in a mere consent of 
wills or a social compact ?) but that they derive it directly from God ; 
that human governments are binding on man only through a divine 
sanction ; according to the doctrine of scripture — " There is no power 
but of God ; and the powers that be are ordained of God." 

These were the great and sublime principles which the Pilgrims 
represented, and which they embodied in their civil and religious 
institutions ; and all that is great and beneficent in our political sys- 
tem is the legitimate growth and fruit of these. But it is all import- 
ant to remember, that these free principles are in their very nature 
religious principles, and derive their being from religious /a/^A. Faith 
in man, or in the liberty of man, springs only from faith in God. The 
liberty of man is sacred and inalienable only because of man's inalien- 
able allegiance to God ; and human rights are rights only because 
involving divine duties and responsibilities. Freedom, the world has 
not yet learned, does not lie in forms of government, or in any out- 
I ward condition or frame work of being, but in the being, or inward 
condition of the soul ; Avhich demands that this outward state be con- 
formed to it, or at least shall not hinder and oppose it. A free soul 
is one that owes and renders no allegiance to aught but Reason, 
Truth and Duty, or to God who is the substance of these ; and a free 
State or polity is that Avhich most effectually secures the soul in the 
exercise of these inalienable rights. The Pilgrims, being free souled, 
framed their outward civil and ecclesiastical polity to these ends or 
demands. It is a notable fact that the form of civil government 
they adopted grew directly out of their religious wants, and was 
only the extension of their ecclesiastical or congregational polity. 



29 

"The secular commonwealth," says the historian, "was designed, 
created, framed, for no other end than to secure the being and wel- 
fare of the Churches." 

" If then their civil polity was essentially popular, if their political 
institutions have grown into the most perfect specimen of a free com- 
monwealth which the world has ever seen, that result is to be ascribed 
to the popular, or as we now use the words, the democratic character 
of their ecclesiastical polity."* 

Thus from the religious character and principles of the Pilgrims, 
resulted that last wonder in the eyes of priestly and monarchical 
Europe, and that first glory in our own — " a Church without a liishop, 
and a State without a King." Thus freedom to worship God involved 
in its establishment the civil liberty and independence of the State. 

I mention as a third element in the character or faith of the Pil- 
grims, they believed in the dignity and ivortli of Mind. They held to 
the necessity of education, in order to the establishment and continu- 
ance of a true Christian State. The emancipation of the conscience 
from all human constraint, while it exalts man in the spiritual scale, 
and opens before him unlimited possibilities, demands also an emanci- 
pation of the reason, to enlighten the conscience and fulfill these 
possibilities. Hence they planted Schools and Colleges beside their 
Churches, in the practical persuasion that knowledge and religion 
cannot safely be sundered, and that both are essential to a true free- 
dom. Hence they inscribed upon the walls of the first College 
founded in New England the motto, " CIwiHo et Ucclesi<v " in recog- 
nition of the truth that education is nothing if not Christian^ baptized 
into the spirit of Christ, and consecrated to the enlargement and 
edification of his body. If the Churches are the pillars of a Christian 
republic, as they confidently believed. Schools and Colleges are the 
buttresses and towers. If the former are the li";hts that enljo-hten 
this temple of liberty, these are the golden candlesticks that support 
and exalt them. The human mind, in the esteem of the Pilgrims, 
was a sacred vessel which they were under religious obligation to 
refine and polish and adorn, and fill with all precious treasures for 
the Master's use, that it might be a vessel unto honor and glory. 
They knew, moreover, by experience the good and value of learning. 
Many of them had been educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and were 
among the ripest of scholars of those ancient universities. And it 
was not the least part of the wisdom of God's Providence displayed 

* Bacon ; Historical DliconraeR, p. 18. 



30 

in the planting of New England, to send over such men to erect here 
on the shores of a new world those sacred institutions of learning 
whose influence has been so widely and beneficently felt, not only in 
this, but in other lands. 

The sacred and religious claims of education were especially under- 
stood and realized by the Pilgrims. The Colleges they planted were 
designed originally as schools for the Churches, whose end was to 
raise up and qualify religious teachers to perpetuate religion in the 
Colonies. If these institutions have outgrown their original design, 
and have become watch-towers of Science overlooking the whole 
domain of knowledge ; if they have become schools for the Nation, 
to raise up statesmen, and scholars, and historians, to perpetuate the 
civil State and the good of learning to all coming time, — it is by the 
same process of development whereby their civil polity has grown 
from the same religious beginning, viz : the protection of the Churches, 
into a national Republic. Yet the original design is still included in 
the larger result. Thus religion was the true spring of all the insti- 
tutions whether ecclesiastical, civil, or educational founded by our 
Fathers ; and they can be preserved in their purity and integrity only 
as they still draw their vital nutriment from the same deep sacred root. 

This faith of the Pilgrims in God, in the liberty and rights of man, 
and in the dignity and Avorth of mind, prepared them to have faith 
also in Human Progress. They did not hold blindly to the dead 
formulas of a past age, either in politics or religion, but forgetting 
the things that were behind, they reached forward to those that are 
before. This is shown in their nonconformity to the prescriptive rites 
and dogmas of the established Church, which their faith and reason 
had outgrown, and their separation and emigration to a new world, 
to form a new and freer polity for themselves. 

It is also seen in the noble and Apostolic Counsel which their pas- 
tor Robinson gave to them on their departure from Leyden, words 
whose prophetic wisdom is just beginning to be understood. He said, 
*' I charge you before God and His blessed angels, that you follow 
me no further than I have followed Christ. And if God shall reveal 
anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to 
receive it as you ever were to receive anything by my ministry ; for 
I am confident that God hath more truth yet to hreah forth out of His 
holy word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the Reformed 
Churches who have come to a period of religion, and will go no 
further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans 



31 

can not be driven to go beyond Luther ; for whatever part of God's 
will He hath further imparted by Calvin, they will rather die than 
embrace it. And so also the Calvinists stick where Calvin loft them — 
a misery much to be lamented. For though they both were shining 
lights in their times, yet God hath not revealed His whole will to 
them. Remember now your Church covenant, whereby you engage 
with God and one another to receive whatever light shall be made 
known to you from Ilis written word. For it is not possible that the 
Christian world is so lately come out of such thick darkness, and that 
full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once."* 

We see the spirit of these words exemplified in the great progres- 
sive and reformatory movements in which New England, and espe- 
cially its Puritan Churches and ministry have ever taken the lead. If 
improvements in theology are to be made, to reconcile more com- 
pletely faith and reason, it is from New England, and the sons of the 
Pilgrims that the new light is to break forth. If Missionary enter- 
prises are to be set on foot for the extension of Christ's Kingdom 
and the fulfilling of His last command, the conception and the move- 
ment must proceed from the same quarter. If a great moral and 
political evil is to be assailed and overthrown, that has rooted itself 
in our land, and entwined its monster growth with all our social and 
political institutions, poisoning and choking their life ; if American 
slavery is to be exterminated, New England Avill inaugurate the reform 
and revolution, as she was the first to see the iniquity and to put it 
away. And if, finally, our glorious Union, purged at length of this 
barbarism by blood, and saved so as by fire, is to be reconstructed 
and built anew on the foundations of liberty and justice, and equal 
rights to all, it is New England still, which Southern sympathizers 
would 'leave out in the cold,' but which is now extended westward to 
the Pacific, and southward as far as Washington, it is New England 
men and Puritan principles that shall lead in the reconstruction. 

One or two thoughts remain in closing, which I will give as practi- 
cal inferences from our subject. 

And first. We we see the infiuence of the faith and polity of the 
Pilgrims upon the character of the nation, or the relation of the 
Plymouth Colony to this Republic. I have already alluded to this, 
but it demands a more distinct exposition. 

I have said that the immortal compact drawn up and signed by the 
Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower, was the germ, and contained 

•VouDg'd CbroniclM, p. 396,7. 



32 

the principle of our Republic<an government. As that grew directly 
out of that spirit of religious liberty which was already embodied in 
their Church polity, and was only the application of this polity to 
civil affairs, it follows that the principle is the same, and that Congre- 
gationalism in the Church, is Democracy or Republicanism in the 
State. The relation, then, of the Pilgrim's faith and polity to our 
Republican institutions, is that of the seed of the fruit. That goodly 
seed of Puritanism, winnowed and ripened to a goodlier quality by 
the separating process through which it had passed, and planted on 
these Western shores by a Providence as remarkable as that which 
led the children of Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land, was 
the germ and true beginning of our nation and government. The 
Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims were the true fathers and mothers of 
the Republic. Other colonies and influences indeed contributed to 
its growth, as the soil and air and water contribute to the growth and 
bulk of a tree, but its organic laiv an^ vitalizing force is derived only 
from the seed. The principle of religious liberty for which our 
fathers suffered the loss of all things, and which was embodied in 
their civil and ecclesiastical polity, is the principle of our republican 
institutions, which are thus not only free, but religious in their origin 
and essence. 

The relation here affirmed is not a mere fond opinion formed by 
the descendants of the Pilgrims to honor their memory, but is the 
testimony of sober and judicious historians. De Toqueville remarks 
that " the Pilgrims broujrht with them to the New World a form of 
Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a demo- 
cratic and republican religion. This contributed powerfully to the estab- 
lishment of a republic and a democracy in public affairs."* Wellman, 
in his book on the Church Polity of the Pilgrims, remarks : " The 
purely democratic form of government in the Church at Leyden, 
already entrenched in the warm affections of the Pilgrims, led to the 
adoption of a corresponding form of civil government on board the 
Mayflower for the Colony at Plymouth. It has been said, and it is 
true, that it was a Congregational Church meeting that first suggested 
the idea of a New England town-meeting ; and a New England town- 
meeting embodies all the germinal principles of our State and national 
government." 

It is also a matter of traditional history that Jefferson derived his 
idea of a democratic government from the meetings of a small Baptist 
Church near his residence in Virginia, which he was accustomed to 

* Democracy in America, 1 : 384, 



33 

attend. " He considered it the only form of pure democracy which 
then existed in the world, and had concluded that it would be the best 
plan of government for the American Colonies."* 

Again, we may learn the duty we owe to the memory and principles 
of the Pilgrims. And first of all, we owe a debt of honor and grati- 
tude which we can never repay, for what they have done and suffered 
in planting here those institutions of religious and civil liberty we 
now enjoy. 

Secondly, We owe it to them to understand and sacredly cherish 
and perpetuate these institutions and those principles which were so 
dear to them, and for Avhich they suffered the loss of all things. We 
owe it to them to understand the vital and inseparable connection 
between civil and religious liberty ; that the State, while it is distinct, 
and to be kept distinct, from the Church, is yet a divine institution, 
having its roots in the conscience and the sense of religious obligation; 
that the decay of religion and morality is a sure precursor to the 
decay of civil liberty. 

AVe owe it to them to understand also the connection between 
education and religion, and the reason why they planted the school- 
house and the meeting-house side by side in their Colonies ; and that 
the attempt now made in many quarters to break down the Sabbath 
as an institution recognised by the State, and to banish the Bible 
from the public schools, is a movement in the interest of despotism, 
and fatal to the integrity of our free institutions. 

We owe it to our Pilgrim Fathers as a filial duty, to cherish that 
faith and polity which we have inherited at their hands, to uphold 
and defend it against all assailants, and to perpetuate and extend it 
by all honorable means, as suitable not only to New England which 
was its nursery, but for the nation which it has helped so largely to 
form and to bless. The Congregational polity, it is no presumption 
to say, is the polity most accordant with our free civil institutions ; 
for both have grown from the same root, are branches of the same 
tree of Liberty planted on Plymouth Rock. The Congregational 
Churches of our land, in their enlightened, liberal, unsectarian and 
progressive spirit, are in closest sympathy with the best spirit of the 
age, and in advance of all others in the great moral questions and 
reformatory movements of the day. No other denomination can show 
so clear a record on the question of Slavery, or has evinced a patri- 
otism more pure and steadfast and self-sacrificing. 

* Belcber'e Belig. Denom. in U. S., 184. 



34 

Finally, we owe it to their memory and principles to contribute of 
our substance, as well as our influence, to build up and strengthen those 
institutions of religion and education which they established at such 
a cost and sacrifice. 

At the recent Memorial Convention at Chicago, held to commemo- 
rate this 250th year since the landing of the Pilgrims, it was recom- 
mended by special resolutions, that arrangements be made to secure 
during the year from every Congregational Church, and if possible 
from every member of every Church, Congregation and Sabbath 
School, special free-will oflerings " to such institutions as embody in 
a permanent form the Pilgrim principles and polity." Under this head 
the following objects were specially recommended : 

(1.) The payment of all debts due by local Churches, and the 
erection of new Churches as monuments to the memory of the Pil- 
grims in the localities where they may be needed ; (2.) the further 
funding and permanent endowment of the Colleges and Theological 
Seminaries of our order ; (3.) the erection of the proposed Con- 
gregational House in Boston, for the valuable library of our denomi- 
nation, and as a permanent home for all our benevolent societies. 

For these and other objects dear to Congregationalists, it was 
recommended that a united effort be made to raise during the year a 
sum not less than Three Millions of Dollars, — with the understanding 
that each donor have the liberty to designate the direction which his 
gift shall take. 

Let me suggest, for our own part in this work, that without excluding 
other objects, our chief effort shall be to finish and dedicate, clear of 
debt, the new and beautiful house of worship we are erecting, as the 
most fitting monument we can rear to the memory of the Pilgrims, 
and in honor of their faith and polity. Let its fair and stately pro- 
portions and ornamented walls, telling of strength and beauty, remind 
us, by contrast, of the plain and homely meeting-houses in which they 
worshipped God, and of the consummate flower into which this 'bare 
grain ' of Puritanism has grown and blossomed during these two and a 
half centuries of its development. Let them remind us also of the sturd- 
iness of their pioneer faith, who " received not the promise, God having 
provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be 
made perfect." Let its ' storied windows ' transmit with the light of 
heaven some blazoned memorial of their faith and history ; and let 
its sky-piercing spire suggest the loftiness of their spirit that soared 
above the world while sojourning upon it, and point to the heaven of 
rest into which they have entered. 



35 

It was my privilege, five summers ago, as a member of the National 
Council, to visit the scenes hallowed and made forever memorable by 
the landing of the Pilgrims. The impression of this visit are so well 
and truthfully described by one of the English delegates present, 
(Rev. Dr. Raleigh,) that I quote his words in an address delivered, 
after his return, before the Congregational Union of England and 
AVales : 

" The day at Plymouth was a day never to be forgotten. To see 
the shores that first saw the Mayflower, to gaze on the little island — 
Clark's Island — on which the band of explorers first landed from their 
little shallop, and ' rested the Sabbath day according to the command- 
ant,' — where the voice of psalms first broke the silence of the wilder- 
ness, iBvith prayers and prophecyings and preaching of the Gospel ; 
to stand on the rock where next day they landed on a cold, sleety 
day — the shortest in the year — and took possession in the name of the 
Lord ; to see some of the first buildings that were reared, rude and 
simple enough, yet expressive in their very form of the simplicity and 
strength of the men who reared them ; to see (in imagination) the 
Pilgrim's meeting-house on the hill — a strong little building with a flat 
roof, where Miles Standish watched by the cannon, while the Pil- 
grims worshipped below : Above all to stand among the graves of the 
forefathers on ' Burial Hill ' ; to join in solemn prayer with their 
sons and successors, and to hold up the hand on that hill-top, in 
solemn attestation of the faith for which they lived and died : — all 
this was something which one felt as a time of ' refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord,' and which one holds in life-long memory, as if 
it were a precious secret, but which one can never describe. 

It happened to be the longest day in summer, so that we had liter- 
ally fulfilled the poet's injunction when he says : — 

' The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest : — 

When summer's thronpd on high, 
And the world's warm breast is in verdue dress'd 

Go stand on the hill where they lie ; 
The earliest ray of the golden day 

On that hallowed spot is cast ; 
And the eveninjj sun, as he leaves the world, 

Looks kindly on that spot last.' " 

All honor, then, to those men of God, the Pilgrim Fathers of New 
England, from whom we have inherited our religious and political 
birthright ! Let us hold them in grateful remembrance, not only in 
this memorial year, but always, and with devout gratitude to God 
who brought them hither, and made them a great nation ; whose 
Providence blessed them, and made their name great, and made them- 



36 

selves a blessing. Let us inherit their principles, as we have inherited 
their institutions, remembering that these can be preserved and per- 
petuated only by the same religious, free, educated and progressive 
faith in which they were founded. As we turn our eyes eastward to 
the rock on which they landed, let it be with an aspiration upward 
to the Rock in which they trusted, — that the God of the Pilgrims will 
be our God, and the God of our children after us, and make us and 
them worthy of the goodly and stainless heritage they have bequeathed. 

" Ay, call it holy ground. 

The soil where first they trod : 
They have left zmstained what there they found — 
Freedom to wobship God." 



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